Little Rock, Ark., Apr 28, 2017 / 11:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As Arkansas executed its fourth inmate in eight days, Catholics offered prayers for the prisoners, the victims, and their families, saying the executions have diminished the whole society.
&… […]
Salt Lake City, Utah, Apr 28, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Bishop of Salt Lake city has urged Utah’s Catholics to be steeped in Catholic identity and to sow the Gospel’s seed within the community, leaving their comfort zone behind.
“Our Church needs more witnesses who can manifest the presence of God in our world,” Bishop Oscar Solis wrote in his April 21 pastoral letter A Springtime of the New Evangelization.
“It begins in our own conversion through personal encounter with Christ in our life. The love of God we experience compels us to go and share the joy of the Gospel and the beauty of our faith with others.”
Bishop Solis was installed as Bishop of Salt Lake City on March 7, and he is the first Philippines-born man to become a bishop in the United States.
Comparing the newness of spring to Christ’s Resurrection, the bishops challenged his diocese to spiritual rebirth and renewed commitment during the Easter season.
“The resurrection of Christ from the dead brings about new beginnings, offering an opportunity to see and experience things with our minds and hearts renewed.”
“Society today mocks our efforts to uphold the dignity of life,” said the bishop, acknowledging the “daunting task” ahead.
“I do not know, exactly, where this path will lead us,” he confessed, but said that “the mission of the Church today remains the same – to bring people closer to God in order to help them encounter Christ and rediscover the presence of God in their lives.”
Bishop Oscar Solis included an outline of priorities for the diocese to focus on, listing faith formation, Catholic identity, religious vocations, social justice, and ecumenism as necessary for the spiritual growth of the Salt Lake City diocese.
“For seeds of evangelization to grow and bear fruit, they must be planted and take root in the good soil of our parishes. Parishioners must be given the opportunity to receive the necessary formation to know, live and share their Christian faith,” he said.
Because “the present culture poses a serious challenge to the practice of our beliefs … it is necessary for every Catholic to learn more about the essential teachings of Christ and our Church,” he said. “Catechetical formation of our young children and teenagers is so important in this regard. It should bring about transformation of hearts and minds, so that they may fully live and share their faith confidently with great ardor, joy and enthusiasm.”
He explained that “we find our Catholic identity in the celebration of the Holy Mass and other Sacraments,” and these “channels of God’s graces” lead to “nourishment, forgiveness and other spiritual gifts.” He said then there must be a renewed call “for vibrant and uplifting Sunday liturgical celebrations and other forms of worship.”
“The scarcity of priests and religious is a serious concern,” he reflected, encouraging everyone to “generate greater enthusiasm in promoting vocations to the priesthood and religious life in order to attend adequately to the spiritual needs of the people. Let us cultivate vocations within the family and in schools accompanied by constant prayers of petition, invitation and witness of our life so that more men and women may be inspired to pursue this path of life.”
He said that “beyond knowing Christ and learning about God’s commandments and the teachings of the Church,” we must establish “a right personal relationship with God and with one another.”
“Justice and charity are the other important components of our mission of evangelization. Love for our neighbors and little ones reveals our love for God. Justice sets the right relationship among people that allows us to see in others, in the poor, the unemployed, the addicts, the sick, the least in our society, the undocumented and the refugees, the very face of Christ.”
Turning to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, Bishop Solis encouraged a fostesring of “dialogue and encounter,” saying that “Courage and fidelity to our mission come along with mutual respect, understanding and harmony among diverse people and leaders of different faith denominations. Commitment to ecumenism, dialogue and unity is our big contribution to the world and humanity.”
The bishop identified the hatred within the world occurring between differences in “race or cultural traditions, religion or politics, gender and color of skin.” As an antidote, he proposed “dialogue tempered with charity that allows us to recognize” the dignity of life in refugees, unborn babies, the poor, and the suffering.
Bishop Oscar Solis emphasized that the Church’s very purpose is “to proclaim the Gospel by the way we believe, love and serve one another,”
“Therefore, we must not make the mistake of trying to hoard the fullness of God’s goodness within the walls of our Church. But be missionaries of mercy with compassionate hearts and the ability to heal wounds, to warm the hearts of others and be a brother or sister to one another.”
Washington D.C., Apr 27, 2017 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A leading U.S. bishop expressed grave concerns Thursday about a revised health care bill which the House may vote on within days.
The bill is an effort replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obam… […]
Denver, Colo., Apr 27, 2017 / 04:07 pm (CNA).- “The recent pledge by the Democratic National Committee chair to support only candidates who embrace the radical unrestricted abortion license is very disturbing. The Democratic Party platform already endorses abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy, even forcing taxpayers to fund it; and now the DNC says that to be a Democrat–indeed to be an American–requires supporting that extreme agenda.
True solidarity with pregnant women and their children transcends all party lines. Abortion doesn’t empower women. Indeed, women deserve better than abortion.
In the name of diversity and inclusion, pro-life and pro-‘choice’ Democrats, alike, should challenge their leadership to recant this intolerant position.”
–Cardinal Timothy Dolan, chair
U.S. bishops’ Pro-Life Activities Committee, April 26
We mark two forgotten anniversaries in 2017. Here’s the first.
Exactly 50 years ago this Easter season, Pope Paul VI (now Blessed Paul VI) issued his great encyclical Populorum Progressio (“On the Development of Peoples”). The text focuses powerfully on global issues of social and economic justice and the need for rich nations to share generously with the poor. It includes the line – worth remembering today – that we “cannot insist too much on the duty of giving foreigners a hospitable reception. It is a duty imposed by human solidarity and by Christian charity” (67).
But Paul’s idea of “development” was much larger than simply providing more and better material goods for the poor, vital though that task is. As he makes clear in Populorum Progressio, there’s no real progress without a right understanding of man’s spiritual identity. There’s no real development without a respect for the wholehuman person as a creature of moral purpose.
Real development, for Paul VI, demands a reverence for human life from conception to natural death. This is why he reminded the U.N. General Assembly (1965) that “Your task is to ensure that there is enough bread on the tables of mankind, and not . . . to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.” It’s why he forcefully rejected abortion – echoing the words of the Second Vatican Council — in his other great encyclical, Humanae Vitae, just a year after Populorum Progressio.
To put it another way: There’s something irrational, something deeply contradictory, in (admirably) arguing for the rights of our nation’s foreign newcomers while (wrongly) allowing – and even sacralizing — the systematic killing of a different kind of foreigner, the child in the womb, the newcomer to life itself. Both the immigrant or refugee and the unborn child are human beings, both have inviolable dignity, and both demand our protection. The difference today is, we don’t recognize and applaud anyone’s right to kill an immigrant.
As of mid-April though, that kind of logic is apparently absent from the national leadership of the Democratic Party. The Huffington Post noted on April 21 that Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez “[has become] the first head of the party to demand ideological purity on abortion rights, promising . . . to support only Democratic candidates who back a woman’s right to choose.”
Which leads us to a second anniversary.
In 1992, exactly 25 years ago this July, Pennsylvania’s Governor Bob Casey, a prolife Democrat, was refused an opportunity to address the Democratic National Convention that nominated Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Casey claimed he was barred because of his opposition to abortion. The Clinton camp claimed otherwise. But the history of the party in the decades since speaks for itself.
It’s now less and less possible for any genuinely prolife candidate to hope for national office as a Democrat. Cardinal Dolan’s articulate concerns, noted above and voiced earlier this week, will be repeated and amplified by many others in 2018, an election year. Party leaders chose this course freely, and they’ve earned whatever bad consequences result in the voting booth. They have no one to blame but themselves. In the meantime, they’ve placed state and local Democratic elected officials – many of whom are good and effective public servants – in needlessly difficult circumstances.
None of this absolves the current White House of its own ugly views, or the Republican Party of its own callous policies, or us as Christians of our duty to help women facing the pressures of an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy. But a key to simple human decency is this: Don’t intentionally kill the innocent. One of our national parties is now fully and forcefully committed to tolerating, and even celebrating, the “right” to exactly that kind of killing.
And no amount of dissembling can excuse it. None.
Reprinted with permission from CatholicPhilly.com
Washington D.C., Apr 27, 2017 / 03:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. government needs to be continually equipped to fight the scourge of human trafficking in new and effective ways, said members of Congress introducing an anti-trafficking bill on Thursd… […]
Philadelphia, Pa., Apr 27, 2017 / 03:22 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Philosopher Alvin Plantinga has won the prestigious Templeton Award for once again making belief in God “a serious option within academic philosophy,” the Templeton Foundation has said.
“The field of philosophy has transformed over the course of my career,” Plantinga said in response to the honor. “If my work played a role in this transformation, I would be very pleased.”
“I hope the news of the Prize will encourage young philosophers, especially those who bring Christian and theistic perspectives to bear on their work, towards greater creativity, integrity, and boldness,” he said April 25.
The Pennsylvania-based John Templeton Foundation awards the prize to a living individual who has made “an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery or practical works.”
“Alvin Plantinga recognized that not only did religious belief not conflict with serious philosophical work, but that it could make crucial contributions to addressing perennial problems in philosophy,” said the foundation’s president Heather Templeton Dill.
Plantinga’s 1974 work “God, Freedom and Evil” is now widely regarded as having provided a definitive counter to the logical challenge that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. His argument rested on the nature of freedom and God’s ability to determine behavior.
His 1984 essay, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” argued that Christian philosophers should let their religious beliefs influence their academic research and serve the needs of their religious communities.
His other work has considered the basis of knowledge, the nature of justified belief, religious belief as a basis for human reasoning, and arguments for the existence of God.
While some philosophers have argued that evolution is incompatible with belief in God, Plantinga has argued that evolution is incompatible with belief in philosophical naturalism that denies the existence of spiritual reality.
Plantinga’s religious background is the Calvinist Dutch Reformed tradition. He currently teaches at Calvin College. He taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1982-2010.
He and his wife, Kathleen, live in Grand Rapids, Mich.
There are now 47 winners of the Templeton Prize, including Mother Teresa, Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, philosopher Charles Taylor, and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
Other winners include Czech priest and philosopher Tomas Halik, South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama.
The prize was established in 1972 by global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. The current prize includes a cash award of about $1.4 million.
Sacramento, Calif., Apr 27, 2017 / 12:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A lawsuit has been filed against a Catholic hospital in California for refusing an elective hysterectomy to a female who identifies as a man and who sought the procedure as part of their sex reassignment.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Evan Minton, who had a hysterectomy scheduled for August 2016 with the Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, Calif., in the Sacramento metro area.
Minton claims the procedure was cancelled once the hospital learned that Minton was transgender, and asked to be referred to as “he”. The hospital offered to send Minton to a different medical center.
“We feel very clearly that they discriminated against me because I’m transgender – and that is against the law,” Minton told local media.
The ACLU alleges in the suit that the hospital’s actions amount to “sex discrimination in violation of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act” which prohibits businesses from discriminating against patrons on the basis of one’s gender. The group is seeking a court order that would force the hospital to perform elective hysterectomies in the future.
Dignity Health, the group that owns Mercy San Juan, was able to transfer Minton to one of its Methodist hospitals a few days after the initial procedure was denied.
Following Catholic teaching, Mercy San Juan does not perform elective sterilization procedures on anyone.
Dignity Health said in a statement that it cannot reply to the allegations because they have not yet been served with the complaint.
“What we can share is that at Dignity Health Mercy San Juan Medical Center, the services we provide are available to all members of the communities we serve without discrimination. We understand how important this surgery is for transgender individuals, and were happy to provide Mr. Minton and his surgeon the use of another Dignity Health hospital for his surgery within a few days.”
“We do not provide elective sterilizations at Dignity Health’s Catholic facilities in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs) and the medical staff bylaws.”
The ACLU has long opposed Catholic hospitals operating according to Catholic teaching.
The ACLU and the group the MergerWatch Project co-authored a 2013 report that claimed the growth of Catholic hospitals was a “miscarriage of medicine.”
In 2015, the ACLU sued the Detroit area’s Trinity Health Corporations, one of the largest Catholic health care operations in the United States, for their refusal to perform abortions and tubal ligations. The lawsuit was dismissed.
In 2016, an ACLU report alleged that Catholic hospitals put women at risk for following Catholic teaching regarding abortion and reproductive health.
Also in 2016, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital in Chicago, claiming it had denied IUD removal to Melanie Jones. However, a representative from Mercy Hospital told CNA that the doctors at Mercy Hospital had offered to remove the woman’s IUD — the removal is an entirely ethical procedure from the Catholic moral standpoint — but Jones declined.
All Catholic hospitals in the United States operate under the U.S. Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which ban abortion, sterilization, emergency contraception, and tubal ligations.
Washington D.C., Apr 26, 2017 / 04:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid a rising tide of violence, imprisonment, and harassment on account of people’s religious beliefs, the United States cannot grow weary of defending religious freedom, a leading advoca… […]
Denver, Colo., Apr 26, 2017 / 03:04 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver has announced that parishes in his diocese may continue to charter Boy Scout troops, as long as they follow requirements to ensure that Catholic identity and teaching … […]
Washington D.C., Apr 26, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When the leader of the Democratic party pulled an about-face this week, claiming that support for abortion was a non-negotiable part of the platform, pro-life Democrats were utterly dismayed.
“It was just stunning to see,” Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told CNA.
Day was referring to DNC chair Tom Perez supporting a Democratic mayoral candidate in Nebraska who had in the past embraced pro-life positions – and then the next day saying there was no room in the Democratic party for pro-life politicians.
“Pro-life Democrats are deeply concerned about this extreme position that the Democratic Party has taken and this non-negotiable position,” she said.
Last week, former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and DNC chair Tom Perez publicly supported the Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Neb., Heath Mello.
Mello had supported abortion restrictions in the past as a state senator. According to The Nation, Mello co-sponsored a bill in 2009 that mandated doctors to inform pregnant women of their option to view an ultrasound, and also voted for a 20-week abortion ban, a ban on abortion funding in health plans on the exchanges of the Affordable Care Act, and a law requiring the consent of one parent for minors to have abortions.
Mello was previously endorsed by the group Nebraska Right to Life in 2012, but he had also received a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood Voters of Nebraska in 2015, his campaign manager pointed out to the Huffington Post.
A Catholic, Mello said in a statement to the Huffington Post that “while my faith guides my personal views, as Mayor I would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care.”
Saint John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae states that “laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual; they thus deny the equality of everyone before the law.”
The encyclical continues, “abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection.”
Yet the abortion rights advocacy group NARAL harshly criticized Perez and Sanders for their “politically stupid” show of support for a candidate who had supported abortion restrictions in the past.
“It’s not possible to have an authentic conversation about economic security for women that does not include our ability to decide when and how we have children,” NARAL said.
On Friday, Perez said that there was no place for pro-life politicians in the party. “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” he said. “This is not negotiable and should not chance city by city or state by state.”
NARAL then issued a statement praising him for his defense of the “core values” of the Democratic Party.
“It was stunning,” Day said of Perez’s about-face. “He goes out, and the DNC is behind this pro-life candidate, which is necessary to be a big tent party if we’re going to win. So they rally behind this guy (Mello), and then less than 24 hours later he (Perez) puts a statement out saying ‘just kidding. We don’t want you in the party at all.’”
Perez made the abortion issue “non-negotiable” for Democrats, Day continued, and was “strong-arming” party members “to step away from their conscience and not support the pro-life position anymore.”
Democratic political leaders had mixed reactions to Perez’s comments. On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was asked if she thought there was room in the Democratic Party for pro-life politicians, she answered “of course.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), meanwhile, said on CNN on Sunday that he and the party were committed “to reproductive rights,” and added that “I know within the ranks of the Democratic Party there are those who see that differently on a personal basis, but when it comes to the policy position, I think we need to be clear and unequivocal.”
The 2016 Democratic Party platform featured a strong pro-abortion plank, calling not only for abortion access but also for the overturning of decades-old policies that prohibited direct taxpayer funding of abortions both at home and abroad – the Hyde Amendment and the Helms Amendment.
“We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion – regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured,” the platform stated.
“We will continue to oppose – and seek to overturn – federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment.”
Pro-lifers, meanwhile, have countered that NARAL’s pro-abortion strategy alienates millions of Democratic voters.
“Pro-life Democrats have been leaving in droves,” Day said of recent elections. Perez’s total support for abortion rights “may be popular in California or New York,” she said, but “these values don’t play well in the heartland.”
“There is an enormous disconnect between Democrat and Independent rank and file voters and national leaders like DNC Chairman Tom Perez and Senator Dick Durbin on the issue of abortion,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.
Dannenfelser was one of the pro-life advisors to the Trump campaign in the 2016 election, heading the campaign’s pro-life task coalition.
Perez “drew a line in the sand” with his comments on Friday said Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, adding that he was “decisively alienating the 23 percent of Democrat voters who identify as pro-life and 44 percent of Democrats oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.”
“The March for Life has a 44-year track record of uniting people of all backgrounds in defense of the inherent dignity of all human life,” she said.
“We have welcomed and will continue to welcome pro-life Democrats like Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) to speak at the March, and will continue to support all whom fight for the right to life until the culture of abortion is unthinkable to every person and party alike.”
© Catholic World Report